Science Café on RRI in Vienna

‘Autonomous Vehicles – A Melange of Technological Process and Societal Behaviour’ – was the topic of this Viennese Science Café on RRI, hosted by the Austrian ScienceCenter-Network on January 18th 2018. The course took place at the WUK – a well-known cultural, educational and socio-political space in Vienna.

This public engagement activity was organized within the HEIRRI project in cooperation with the Lauder Business School (LBS) and the Austrian Institute of Advanced Studies (IHS). The majority of participants were MBA bachelor students at the LBS, some partners of the ScienceCenter-Network and a handful other participants, who joined the event for the first time. All in all over 60 people took part in our discussion.

As a starting point, Robert Braun (professor at the IHS) and the guest scientist Alexandra Millonig introduced the HEIRRI project in a science café format. The icebreaking activity was a good crossover to the presentation of Millonig, who works in the department of mobility systems at the Austrian Institute of Technology.

Millonig started with a quick overview of current challenges faced by the mobility sector (accidents, pollutions, etc.). Furthermore she pointed out how society will/could react on the ongoing automatization of vehicles. Finally, she addressed what it could mean to use these technologies responsibly and sustainably. After the input of our researcher, the event switched to smaller discussion groups where the participants were invited to raise their own questions and to exchange opinions among each other.